


where we stay

by egeria



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anyways, Baking, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, I mean kind of, Iroh is dead, Slice of Life, Well - Freeform, anyways he's dead and has been dead, but it's not like, but like barely, he's raising them, mentioned really - Freeform, single dad!lu ten, sorry to inform y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:54:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29275776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/egeria/pseuds/egeria
Summary: “Uh,” Azula finally says, still holding the bowl of icing she’d commandeered. “Happy birthday?”Zuko tries to give an innocent smile.Lu Ten just stares for another moment, opens his mouth, before closing it again. “Right. Well,” he looks back and forth between the two of them. “Thank you?”~~or: lu ten maybe having to raise these chaotic teens, but at least there's cake.
Relationships: Azula & Lu Ten, Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Lu Ten & Zuko
Comments: 11
Kudos: 170





	where we stay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [constellayetion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/constellayetion/gifts).



> this has no plot. it's just fluff. pure fluff. what's a plot.
> 
> dedicated to the loml [Em](https://archiveofourown.org/users/constellayetion/pseuds/constellayetion)

She’s his last customer of the day, buying the Chinese version of  _ Twilight _ , which Zuko swore she already owned. 

“I can’t believe you’re making me pay,” she mumbles as she hands over a crumbled up twenty. 

Zuko rolls his eyes. “Take that up with Jeong Jeong.”

The aforementioned man is sitting behind Zuko, reading through the news, and he lets out a dignified snort. Zuko pins Azula with an  _ I told you so _ look. She glares. 

“I’m heading out,” Zuko tells Jeong Jeong as he packs up her book. 

Jeong Jeong gives a small nod. “Hmm, and you have everything you need for tonight?”

“Wu is helping us,” Azula says, pocketing the change Zuko hands her. “She said she left a bag of ingredients on the patio.”

Jeong Jeong hums, reaching over to squeeze Zuko on the shoulder. “Don’t burn anything down.”

Zuko frowns, turning to glare at him. “That was  _ one time _ .”

“And yet the reminder still stands,” Jeong Jeong replies, voice dry. He gives him a gentle push from behind the counter. The two teens shuffle towards the door, both with a put upon look. “Call Piandao or me if you need any more ingredients. It’ll be dark soon and I don’t want either of you leaving.”

“Okay, Jeong Jeong,” Azula says, voice dry and monotone. “We promise not to get murdered or burn the building down.”

He smirks. “That’s the spirit.”

The two teens leave the Chinese bookstore, tucked away in a small mall in southeast Portland, walking over to the main street where the bus stop is, standing together in silence, both putting their headphones in. It was going to be another thirty minutes— twenty minutes on the bus and a ten minute walk to their small duplex they shared with their cousin. 

When they make it home, the ingredients left by Wu— or Aunt Wu as she insisted on being called— were left where promised. She’s their eccentric neighbor, who runs some psychic, fortune-telling business in the trendy area of town, where she overcharges white people with dreads. When she’s not reading their palms or talking about the volcanoes surrounding the city, she’s alarmingly helpful. 

“Do you even know how to bake?” Zuko asks Azula, looking at the ingredients as she pulls them out of the bag. To be quite honest, Zuko isn’t sure he’s ever actually touched flour before. 

Azula glares at him, her eyes narrowed. “Just grab a mixing bowl and leave me alone.”

Zuko pouts. “But I wanna help.”

She appraises him, her eyes looking him up and down, before she lets out a long sigh. “Fine, you can make the icing.”

He smiles, leaning over to rub at her head and squawking as she starts to hit him, before looking at the recipe for the cake. Aunt Wu always writes the directions in traditional characters, and he isn’t as good at reading them as Azula, so it takes all of his mental energy to decipher the recipe in front of him. Azula’s turned on some punk rock band that was probably popular in the late 2000s, and the two are able to work together in silence on their respective tasks.

When they’ve both finished-- the cake is in the oven and the vanilla buttermilk icing, Lu Ten’s favorite, is sitting in the fridge, Azula and Zuko stare at each other for a moment, before Azula shrugs and grabs her phone.

“Let me know when the oven beeps,” she says, heading off towards her room. 

“Going to FaceTime your girlfriend, then?” he calls after her, laughing at the middle finger she throws up at him as her door slams shut.

They’re home is small-- just the left side of a duplex on the east side of the city. Lu Ten had sold the house his dad had lived in-- the maintenance and taxes had been just too much, and even though Iroh had left a decent inheritance, Lu Ten had squirreled most of the money away for college funds for Azula and Zuko (and, after Piandao had a  _ very _ long talk with him, he’d put some away for his eventual college education as well.) While it allows them all to have their own bedroom, though admittedly they aren’t very large, there’s only one bathroom and the appliances seem to break all of the time.

But, Zuko knows it’s better than living with his dad. And, well, Lu Ten is trying his best. It’s not easy being 24 and raising two teenagers. 

Today, Lu Ten got the night off from Piandao, where he helps teach martial arts at one of the top schools in the city. But he still had to work his other job, where he manages a breakfast cafe. He’d texted the two of them to let them know he’d be home around five, traffic conditions permitting. Which was excellent timing for their cake, as long as they didn’t, you know, catch anything on fire.

(In their first year of living with Lu Ten, they had tried to make mooncakes, only to cause a small fire and use too much of the fire extinguisher. Lu Ten hadn’t let them cook anything more complex than macaroni and cheese for the next nine months.)

Zuko waits on the couch, aimlessly playing  _ Animal Crossing _ while he waits for the oven to beep. He can hear Azula in her room, giggling while she talks on the phone. Fourteen year olds really are ridiculously lovesick, aren’t they?

He’s just finished redecorating his house when the oven beeps, and he calls for Azula to come take it out of the oven. He can hear her do… something with it, honestly Zuko has no idea how cooking works, before she comes and plops herself on the couch.

“It has to cool for 30 minutes in the freezer,” she says, grabbing the controller from him and ignoring his noise of indignation. “Then we can decorate it.”

Zuko glares at her, but doesn’t protest as she switches over to her account and checks on her island, spending the time to aimlessly scroll through Twitter on his phone. 

“Did you wrap his present?” she asks, and he looks up from his phone.

“Wrap… oh, yeah. It’s in my room.” They’d gone in together to get Lu Ten a new PlayStation game that he’d been talking about--something with Japanese lore, Zuko has no idea. He doesn’t have the mental energy for any video game more stressful than  _ The Sims _ , but it’s what Lu Ten uses to destress after working two full-time jobs. 

(And, by going in together, Zuko means that he bought the present since he’s the only one legally allowed to work, and had just put Azula’s name on the package as well.)

“Should I bring it in here?” he asks, eyeing the short hall that leads to his bedroom. 

Azula shrugs, aggressively hitting the controller as she tries to catch a ridiculously large fish. “I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be a nice birthday decoration.”

Zuko arches an eyebrow. “The present is a decoration?”

She shrugs again. “Not like we have streamers or balloons.”

Zuko snorts, but stands up to go retrieve the present from its hiding spot in the back corner of his very tiny closet. He may not be good at baking, but he’s fantastic at wrapping. His friendship with Jin, who is the queen of gift-giving, has finally paid off.

He comes back in and plops it on the dining room table that sits in the tight corner between the couch and the wall that divides the living room and kitchen. They rarely ever use this for actual dining-- honestly, it’s more so the table that Zuko and Azula use to do homework, and the piles of paper stacked up prove it. So, just to make it seem somewhat better, Zuko spends a moment organizing the papers into somewhat more manageable piles.

(And very deliberately shoves his most recent progress report to the bottom of the pile. No reason to bring that mess up again.)

Finally, after aimlessly shuffling papers around, the timer goes off and Azula pauses her game, stretching a bit before going to retrieve the cake from the freezer. Zuko eagerly retrieves his icing from the fridge, holding up the bowl like it’s his most prized possession.

Azula rolls her eyes. “Do you want to decorate?”

He eyes the cake and the frosting, before giving a small shrug. “I can do the base layer and you can uh…” he squints at the cake. “What else do we use to decorate?”

Azula purses her lips at this, looking back at the cake and at the singular bowl of icing they have. “Huh,” she says, putting her hands on her hips. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

Zuko bites his lip as he considers this, looking around at the kitchen for any mysterious additional icing that may have just randomly appeared. 

And then, his eyes land on it. 

The bag of M&Ms. 

Azula follows his line of sight and smiles, picking up the bag and cradling it to her chest. “Who knew these little dots of chocolate-y goodness would be our savior?”

He laughs, going over to start icing the cake, trying his hardest to make it smooth like the people on  _ The Great British Bake-Off _ manage to do. He doesn’t quite manage, but honestly, progress is progress, and he stands back and looks proudly on his creation.

Azula sighs, shaking the bag of M&Ms. “Should we like… spell something? Do a design?”

Zuko considers this, cocking his head as he stares at the cake in front of him.

“Maybe, like, words?” Zuko says, scratching the back of his head.

Azula glares. “Words. Great, thanks. Glad AP English is so beneficial.”

Zuko narrows her eyes, before slowly looking down at the remnants of icing in the bowl, and looking back over at Azula, who’s not paying him any attention, solely focussed on analyzing the cake.

Honestly, not paying attention to a slighted Zuko is the worst decision you can make.

He quickly scoops up a glob of icing on his finger and  _ lunges _ , smearing the icing all over her face, laughing as she yells at him and throws him to the ground. He’s on his back cackling when all of the sudden, there’s a spoonful of icing being thrown at his face, landing right on his eye.

“Azula!” he screams, going to wipe it off, only to have yet another spoonful land on his face. “Azula, I only did it once!”

“I didn’t ask,” she responds, throwing another spoonful at him which he’s actually able to dodge as he goes for her legs, getting ready to pull her down to the ground, ready to smear  _ all of the fucking icing _ all over her hair--

When the door opens.

“Zu-squared?” Lu Ten calls out as he enters the apartment, and they can hear the rustling of him toeing off his shoes and hanging his bag up. The nickname was something he’d started saying when he was in high school, much to the annoyance of his cousins. But the nickname had stuck, and now it was too late to change. 

The two pause, both covered in icing, and Zuko halfway through the motion of dragging his sister to the floor, with the almost-finished cake sitting prettily on the counter.

“Zuko? Azula?” he asks again, and they don’t have time to move before he’s entering the kitchen and beholding the sight of his chaotic cousins.

Lu Ten blinks a few times, and silently watches as Zuko slowly stands off the ground, and the two of them, with no words being said, slowly start to wipe the icing off of their faces.

“Uh,” Azula finally says, still holding the bowl of icing she’d commandeered. “Happy birthday?”

Zuko tries to give an innocent smile.

Lu Ten just stares for another moment, opens his mouth, before closing it again. “Right. Well,” he looks back and forth between the two of them. “Thank you?”

There’s another awkward moment of silence, before Lu Ten finally lands his eyes on the cake. “Oh!” he says, taking some steps forward to look at it. “Did you… did you both make me a cake?” His eyes scan over the mess on the counter, before looking back at them.

Zuko nods. “Yeah, well, um, we just wanted to get you something for your birthday. Well, we got you a present. But, uh, well…”

Azula cuts in, shifting a bit on her feet. “You just, you know, do a lot for us. So,” she gestures vaguely at the pastry. “Cake. We were going to decorate it with M&Ms, but then  _ somebody _ had to start an icing war.”

Zuko rolls his eyes. “You deserved it.”

“I did not!”

“Hey,” Lu Ten cuts in, staring over at them with a firm but fond look. “It happens, I’m just glad you didn’t break anything.” He reaches over to rub both of their heads, laughing at the affronted sounds they make. “And thank you for the cake. I really appreciate it.”

They both preen under the praise, and Lu Ten shakes his head fondly as he opens a drawer to grab a knife. “Cake for dinner sound good?”

The two teens nod, Azula quickly turning to grab plates as Zuko reaches over to get forks, and Lu Ten happily cuts them some slices.

“It would’ve said ‘Happy birthday, best cousin!’, if Zuko hadn’t ruined it,” Azula says as she takes a bite.

Zuko glares. “He’s our only cousin, how is he the best?”

“I’m the best by default,” Lu Ten easily replies, shoveling another mouthful of cake in. “This is delicious, thank you.”

Azula smiles, but Zuko still doesn’t seem satisfied. “I don’t know if that’s how ‘best’ works.”

Lu Ten rolls his eyes, taking another big bite. “You take one SAT prep class, and now you’re the vocabulary expert.”

“I thought that was the whole point of the program?” Zuko replies back, smirking at Lu Ten’s annoyed glance.

“You’re such a smartass.” Lu Ten finishes his cake, placing the plate in the overflowing sink that Zuko’s sure he’ll have to deal with later.

“We also got you a present,” Azula says, placing her plate down as well.

Lu Ten arches an eyebrow. “Oh, you two didn’t have to do that… Zuko, you don’t need to spend your money on--”

“We wanted to,” Zuko responds. The whole reason Zuko has a job in the first place was so he could have some more spending money, and it allowed Lu Ten to ease up the budget a bit. 

Lu Ten purses his lips, but finally nods and lets himself be led into the living room and plopped onto the couch by Azula, while Zuko brings over the present. He smiles as he takes it, and gracefully opens the package. When he sees the game, he gives a little gasp of surprise.

“Oh my god, you two didn’t have to buy me this!” He says, flipping the game over and scanning the case. “But thank you so much!” He leans over to give Azula a kiss on the forehead, and pulls Zuko down on the couch to do the same to him. “I’m excited to get to play it.”

“Google said it was one of the best games last year,” Azula says, and Lu Ten laughs a bit.

“I’m sure you did all of the research. Great job, you too. Truly one of my best birthdays yet.”

They all settle back on the couch, Zuko passing Lu Ten the remote and watching as he flips through the channels before settling on  _ Dragon Gate Inn _ , one of Uncle Iroh’s favorite movies. They’d watched this movie a million times with their uncle, and it had been a bit of a bore eventually. But, on a day like this, on Lu Ten’s fourth birthday without his dad, neither Zuko or Azula wanted to voice any complaints.

They settled in, the familiar dialogue washing over them, and eventually Zuko noticed Azula nodding off on Lu Ten’s otherside, her head leaning against his shoulder. He watched Lu Ten adjust his arm so she’d be more comfortable, and he slowly rubbed circles on her back as she fully dozed off. 

It didn’t take long for Zuko to start feeling his eyes get heavy, and before he could even think about it, he was also leaning against Lu Ten, who let out a small laugh as he held him close. 

“Don’t wanna fall asleep on your birthday,” Zuko murmurs, pressing his face into his cousin’s shoulder.

Lu Ten rubbed his back. “It’s okay, Zuko. You both already made it a great birthday.”

“Really?” Zuko asks, barely conscious at this point.

“Mmhm,” Lu Ten hums, and Zuko lets a small smile grow on his lips as he slips further and further away. “Both of you being here is all I need.”

Zuko presses more into his side, practically asleep now, and mumbles out an  _ I love you _ .

Right before he fully slips under, he hears Lu Ten’s response. A gentle, fond, and loving response. “I love you, too, Zu. I love you, too.”

And then, Zuko was asleep, and warm, and full of cake. And content.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to follow me on tumblr (: [bisexual-atla](https://bisexual-atla.tumblr.com/)


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